Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (38 page)

Part VI

The Twenty-eighth Law of the Ether

The Maker bequeathed the gift to shape the Ether’s future to those that inhabit it and no Law shall interfere with this gift

Chapter 81

Alix drifted aimlessly across different plains of consciousness. Light occasionally flashed behind her closed eyes and she had the sense of movement, being guided to some foreign world. She felt encased in something dark and overpowering. A drug, perhaps, coursing through her system, subduing her almost entirely. Her body felt heavy and outside of her control.

She heard voices nearby, hushed tones, and laughter; cruel, derisive laughter. There were moments of freezing cold wind cutting into her skin. Her arms were bare. Everything ached, but mostly she felt numb. She tried to speak but her mouth was too dry. No voice in her ear now. No comforting words of explanation. Just hushed tones and that laughter.

Time passed unmeasured. An hour, maybe two. All the while caught in a cold lacuna between sleep and awake in a world of shadows and darkness.

Then the sound of motion, impetus gaining, voices raised. A rough surface against her back. The sound of sawing wood. Men around her, attending to her, busying themselves with her. She managed to allow a small slit of light through a half open, crusty eye. Watched the moonlight reflect off her outstretched, pale arm. Watched colours dance around her vision until the feeling of heaviness took her off to the shadows again and the light faded.

Inside her stomach, something stirred. Everything fluttered and faltered. Her heart tapped wildly against her breast. She fought back the feeling of nausea.

Then a clank: the sound of metal on metal, like the blacksmith forging. Pain ripped through her body, emanating from her arm. Her body went rigid. She tried to cry out but emitted nothing but air as her lungs deflated and she gasped for breath. Another clank and she felt a warm liquid hit her face. She tried turning her head but everything seized up, her body tensing in agony as every nerve jolted at once.

Creaking from behind her head, the surface she lay on moving, scraping against her skull. Her head lolled forward. She groaned with the pain but still
couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. In the end, her body submitted to unconsciousness again.

              *

The world
s of shadows and light began to merge, seeping into each other and then slowly extricating. Like oil poured into water, the black cloud whirling gracefully as the liquids dance together until eventually separating.

So it was that the light dissipated from the shadows and Alix felt aroused from a deep, dreamless sleep.

She felt anaesthetised. Her stomach churned. Her breathing was laboured and slow. She was born again from the womb, naked and afraid.

There were pains in her arms and feet but she couldn’t tell from what. She couldn’t feel the ends of her fingers or toes. The memories of
Cargil’s office flashed before her eyes but she couldn’t make sense of what had happened.

The room was dingy but it still took some time for her eyes to adjust to the light. Grey everywhere. Looking down from some point of elevation. A balcony perhaps. Rows of benches facing her. A stage maybe? Stone pillars standing to attention, lining a central a
isle. A white table below her. The smell of mould and rot in the air.

She couldn’t move. Her body w
as too painful. Her head rolled to one side and she looked down her extended arm. She was holding something. Metal. Long. She tried to unclasp her hand, expecting the thing to fall to the floor with a clatter but it didn’t. Then she saw the blood. Stained her arm from hand to shoulder but concentrated around the metal object, where the pain was. She only wore her jeans, which felt wet and heavy and pulled around her waist, and a sleeveless black top. Her other clothes were gone. What had they done to her?

She blinked to remove the haze and focussed on her arm. She wasn’t holding anything. She wished she was, but she wasn’t. Jutting out from her arm, puncturing her skin and wedged through her wrist,
pinning her to a wooden frame was a long, thick nail, slightly bent from the hammer strikes. She gagged and the pain wrentched up her arms. She turned her head. Same on the other side. Her legs crossed over, a nail driven through her feet, fusing them together.

Jesus Christ.

She was being crucified.

Underneath her face was a rope hanging down like a noose. She found she could wrap her neck in it and tense her back and shoulder muscles, taking a small amount of strain off her arms and legs. Whilst it brought her a little comfort, she knew it was there to keep her from being asphyxiated by her own body weight. It was there to prolong her agony. Whoever had done this wanted her to stay alive for as long as they kept that rope in place.

It could be days before she starved or bled to death.

Her stomach churned again but it was more than just sharp pangs. Something was moving
inside
of her. The sensation was unbearable. She could feel something moving up her gullet, choking her, clawing its way up her windpipe.

She gagged. Her stomach spasmed and for a moment it seemed like the intense pain caused by the movement would send her back to the shadows but at last she was able to gasp for air. Something in her mouth. At first she thought it might be a fly but the image of the moth in the jar came to her. She trapped the panicked creature at the roof of her mouth with her tongue. She felt its little wings beating furiously against her teeth as it fought her grip. It tasted disgusting. Her tongue could feel along its furry body and prickly legs but she resisted the temptation to spit.
She moved the insect across the ridge to the front of her mouth, pushed it between her teeth and bit down hard.

There was a horrible crunch.

The moth’s insides were warm and gooey.

She spat everything out and
passed out again.

*

This time when the shadows left, Alix heard a familiar voice whisper in her ear.

A
Wyrm,
Azrael said. She couldn’t find the power to respond but nodded her head, exhausted, drained of everything. She tasted blood at the back of her throat.

A creature from the A’iniavh Sea, the Seventh Great World. Looks like an Indian atlas moth found here in the Ether but they’re not. They have the ability to break the co
nnection between Necromire and Host causing a temporary severance of power. Best way to keep it that way is to ingest it. Evil little creature. Took me a long time to expel it from you.

“Us,” she wheezed. It was all she could manage, although having the alien back with her gave her some strength back.

Us,
Azrael repeated.

She was nailed to a giant wooden cross erected at the far end of the church, which she recog
nised now as being the church at White Helmsley, behind the altar. The church entrance and font were at the other end. It was dark outside. The only light was from the moon seeping in through the stained glass windows and picking out the stone work around the pillars and casting one side of the building in shadow. It was freezing and the moonlight glinted off her breath with every exhalation.

The Harbinger was there waiting for us,
said Azrael.
Cargil must be a partisan for Sin. They must have corrupted him. But what do they want with y... with us?

Alix alternated between letting her arms and feet hold her up and straining her neck in the noose in front of her. She felt, not for the first time in the last couple of days, like her life hung in the balance.

“Can you...” she wheezed but every word was agony.

I can keep you alive for some time, yes,
she said softly.
But not indefinitely.

“I don’t... want...”

I know. I can feel it. But you must fight, Alix. You have to fight it. If you can find some strength, I can help you control the Essence. But you have to help me.

“Can’t... too far...”

No. It’s not over. It is not over, Alix, but you have to help me.

A tear rolled down her cheek and fell to the floor. She couldn’t live with this pain.

She thought of Ash. Saw his face. Heard his voice calm her; the soft touch of his hand.

She gritted her teeth and wailed.

*

Beneath her, she heard somebody moving around her feet. The sound of footsteps on the stone floor brought her back from the shadows once again. She opened her eyes, stared at a man moving chairs from one side of the church to the other. He was
unnaturally tall and moved in a clumsy fashion, as if his arms and legs were too long to control. His skin was an unhealthy taupe, like a mushroom. His eyes were set in dark circles.

The Russian from
Innsmouth. Ned.

For a while, she watched him shuffle arou
nd below busying himself with whatever he was doing. He wore a white robe. It looked unclean. There were streaks of red on it. The hood was down and she could see his face, his familiar face.

Alix, it’s...

“You,” she gasped, fighting back the pain so she could talk. “Fuck you!”

He ignored her, un-stacked two wooden chairs he had found in the vestry and placed them at the side of the altar next to each other. He stood back to look at them. Dissatisfied, he moved one a little, making sure they were perfectly in line.

After a while, he looked up at Alix and smiled.

“
What’s that expression? Ah, yes: how’s it hanging, doctor?” he said.

“Fuck you,” Alix seethed and he let out a laugh that resonated round the stone walls. A laugh she recognised from earlier. After she had been dragged out of
Cargil’s office.

“This
is a church, Doctor Franchot. Watch your language, won’t you?”

“You’re... you’re the Harbinger?” Every effort to speak was agony.

Grigori smiled broadly. The robe was fastened with a red cord tied at the side, two strands flaccid below his knee. Even from up on the cross he looked huge. 

She watched him smile at her again before he disappeared int
o the darkness of the far aisle. He returned a few seconds later, the Laicey twins dutifully following him. They held hands and did as he asked, sitting, with a very un-childlike rigidity, on the chairs he had put out, their lifeless eyes staring into space. Alix’s stomach churned.

“Let them go,” she said weakly.

“No, I cannot but if I would do it for anyone, doctor, then for you I would. But it is hopeless anyway. Their bodies have been regenerated but their souls trapped in the Inter-World. They have no souls. Perhaps that is why they look so sad, wouldn’t you say? They are dead, no?”

“You’re sick,” she whispered.

“No, I am in good health, doctor; thank you. You on the other hand,” he chuckled unpleasantly, “you are - let me find the words – in a predicament, no?”

He’s not the Harbinger,
said Azrael.
He’s just a foot-soldier.

Grigori took out a gold cigarette case from the inside of his robe. He lit up and shuffled over to Alix so that his face was close to her feet. He looked up and grinned.

“So much time wasted trying to find you, doctor, and then Harker sends you right to us! Makes you wonder about her, doesn’t it?”

“What do you want with me?”

“Oh, how delightful: you don’t know. It is fate that nailed you to that cross, doctor. Fate delivered you to us just when all seemed lost.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No,” he said thoughtfully, taking a long, heavy drag on the cig. “No, perhaps you don’t. But then again, you get your information from that bitch Harker and is she going to tell
you
everything? I think not. You’re just a stupid child to her, doctor Franchot. A stupid child. But to us? To us, you’re much more than that.” He leant in close. Put his hands on her naked feet. Ran his tongue up her ankle, tasted the dried blood that stained everything.

“To us, doctor Franchot, you’re a fucking
goddess
.”

The contact was enough and even with every inch of her hurting, the Essenc
e transported her into his mind...

*

She saw a young boy, no more than eight, sat on a chair, his head hung low; a greasy mop of yellow hair falling about his face. His arms hung clumsily by his side like they were unnatural growths protruding from his sides. Stood over him, an elderly man, the lines on his face almost as deep as the cracks on the walls. He wore a long brown cloak that trailed on the floor. The boy: a pair of shorts and a dirty yellow tee-shirt.

“What is this blasphemy,
Grigori?” the man demanded, a piece of paper screwed up in his giant hands with child’s writing on it. His accent like Grigori’s. The boy stayed silent, staring at nothing. The man bent low so that his eyes were level with Grigori’s and he spat the words into his face.

“Do you know what we do to
seers, Grigori?” He put his hand on the boys face, as if examining him, trying to find some hidden thing that evaded him. “We burn them,” he said. “We burn them and dispose of their ashes in holes in the ground and our lives go on as if they never existed.”

Grigori
looked up, looked through the man to the space between them. “This is a message from God, teacher,” he said quietly. “It is not for you.”